CBS’s Partnerswas cancelled and removed from the schedule on Friday. Slightly softer exits for ABC’s 666 Park Avenue and Last Resort. Neither show got a back nine pickup, but both will get to air all of their episodes according to ABC. All three are marked “canceled” in the table below. None of them will be back next year.

Nobody who reads our site regularly should be surprised at any of those cancellations. They’d all been certain cancellations both here and in the Renew/Cancel Index for a while. In the case of the two ABC shows, they were. by wide margins the lowest-rated dramas that hadn’t already been cancelled (joining Private Practice). Similarly Partnerswas CBS’s lowest-rated comedy by a wide margin. Predicting those cancellations was akin to predicting that “water is wet” and “fire is hot.”

Another easy prediction: the Nielsen rage and fan campaigns that ensured in comments, e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, etc. While I’m not a believer in the fan campaigns, I’ll give them a very slight edge over Nielsen rage in terms of being worthwhile because they at least can give a person the illusion of doing something productive. Still, I was amused by the EW story that quoted a “suit” as saying it amounts to “pissing in the wind.” But I'll take that over the "antiquated system" complaints, particularly the protests that Nielsen doesn't measure DVR viewing (it does!). But advertisers only pay for commercial viewing 3 days after shows air, and advertisers don't pay when the commercials get skipped/fast-forwarded during DVR playback.

No state-of-the-art measurement system is going to convince advertisers to pay for things they're not interested in paying for. But fans and TV networks can dream!

Don't Trust the B----, Happy Endings& The Neighbors

You can debate whether I did it on purpose or merely forgot to downgrade Don't Trust the B----to certain cancellation and Happy Endings to likely cancellation thiis week. The B---- pulled some horrible, terrible, awful numbers on Tuesday, and Happy Endings wasn't much better. Though Happy Endings is in its third season, because it's first season was only 13 episodes, it's going to need more than one more season to get to the 88 episodes necessary for Mon-Fri syndication. But with Sony involved in its production, its relative ratings will have to get worse to get moved off the bubble.

As for The Neighbors, yep, I did merely forget to downgrade it to the bubble. I updated the text in the table, but the sorting and color is off. Next week...

Update: Bonus Forgetfulness

Yep, I forgot to add Whitneyto the table even though it premiered on Wednesday. Because there's only one data point I'd have had it "on the bubble/too soon" this week anyway. It'll probably be there next week too since it's airing on Thanksgiving Eve...

When it comes to bubble status, like the Renew/Cancel Index we're focusing on the likelihood that a show will be renewed **for next season** (2013-14). Certain shows are toss-ups where based on the ratings, the renewal decisions could go either way and not be surprising.

Here, “canceled” is used interchangeably with “won’t be renewed for next season” and is not meant to imply a show will be yanked off the schedule in the current season though obviously the two outcomes are not mutually exclusive. The semantics police and lawyers should feel free to break out the handcuffs and plead their cases in the comments.

This Isn't The Renew/Cancel Index

Though the basic methodology is the same (intra-network relative ranking of shows by adults 18-49 ),unlike the Renew/Cancel Index which predicts what would happen if the season ended now, Bubble Watch prognosticates about what will happen by May. The two are still usually closely aligned, and almost certainly very closely aligned towards the end of the season.

Note: only scripted shows that have aired at least one episode this season are in the table below.